


The Five Times Peggy Carter Believed Jack Thompson Dead (And The One Time She Should Have Seen Coming)

by KeeperOfTheEternalFlame



Series: Jack Thompson Is A Work In Progress [2]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Agent Carter (TV) Compliant, Agent Carter Spoilers, F/M, I swear to you this was canon compliant before AOS S7, Jack Thompson is a work in progress, Mentions of Suicide, Peggy Carter has a guilt complex, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Sexism, Post-Season/Series 02 Finale, although I doubt you really have to tag that anymore right?, mention of needles, no beta we die like men, some problematic and derisive conversations about mental health and PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-06 01:04:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20282842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KeeperOfTheEternalFlame/pseuds/KeeperOfTheEternalFlame
Summary: In which Peggy Carter could not save every soldier that she loved, but she’ll be damned if she loses another.OrPeggy Carter won’t allow Jack Thompson the dignity of what she considers pretty stupid choices.





	The Five Times Peggy Carter Believed Jack Thompson Dead (And The One Time She Should Have Seen Coming)

**Author's Note:**

> Read Part 1 [That War's Never Really Ended (Not Everyone Came Back)] here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19963561

Saturday dawns uneventfully.

But the Carter-Rogers household is used to leisurely mornings.

Peggy Carter is washing the breakfast dishes and watching Steve work in the little vegetable garden outside the window when the call comes in. She dries her hands on the white towel with the carnations embroidered along the edge and peers at the caller ID.

“Oh!” she exclaims softly with a smile, hurrying her drying as best she can. She tosses the towel on the counter in a haphazard lump and pushes her silvery hair out of her face before pressing the little green phone icon. “Hello?”

Simultaneously, Steve Rogers is getting to his feet in the backyard. He nudges a stone with the toe of his boot and then looks into the kitchen. Peggy’s back is to the window, but he doesn’t need to see her face; he can tell by the tight line of her shoulders that something is off. He takes off his gardening gloves and brushes the loose dirt from his work pants.

He pokes his head in the back door and leans against the frame as Peggy finishes up on the phone.

“Yes, I’ll tell Steve,” she assures the person on the other end. “You take care of yourself now, and you let us know if there’s a single thing we can do to be of use…Alright. Bye, Love.”

Peggy hangs up the phone and places it on the counter beside her favorite towel.

“Everything alright, hon?” Steve asks, voice soft with concern. When she doesn’t respond, Steve steps further into the house, now noticeably uneasy. “Peggy, what’s wrong?”

Peggy turns around, one arm wrapped around her torso and the other hand resting on her chest. She tilts her head and gives Steve a sad smile.

“Jack passed.”

Steve feels the slightest twinge of relief—for a second, he had thought it was about one of the kids—and then he feels enormous guilt over that.

And then he is hit with a wave of grief.

Because this is the first friend he and Peggy have lost in a while. Certainly the first they’ve lost _together_ since ‘44.

He walks over to her, lays a hand on her arm, pulls her to his chest. It takes a moment, but she embraces him back with a deep sigh.

“Elouise said it was in his sleep.”

And at that, Steve has to catch his breath a bit because he can still see the text message: _“She’s gone. In her sleep.”_

He suppresses a shudder. This call isn’t about him. And it is about Peggy, but 2016 is still years away. He can’t torture himself with those thoughts. Not yet.

“They’ll hold the service sometime next week.”

“I’ll clear the calendar.” He holds her silently for another minute. “I’m sorry, Peggy. Are you doing alright?”

Peggy nods, and a single tear falls. “I’ll miss him.”

* * *

The first time is early in their relationship, 1945. She doesn’t know him well, so there’s not really genuine _fear, _per se.

Chief Dooley walks out of his office into the bullpen with that trademark scowl and raises his voice in that unmistakeable tone of authority.

“Has anyone heard from Agent Thompson?”

A few agents look at each other, and Agent Sousa casts a glance over his shoulder at her. She raises her eyebrows, looking uncharacteristically lost, and shakes her head the slightest bit. He shrugs in response and faces front again.

“Must’a overslept,” Agent Krzeminski suggests from his seat on the corner of his desk.

The chief rolls his eyes. “He’s not at home, he’s on mission. Supposed to report back last night.” He scrubs a hand over his mouth. “Not one of you? Not one of you has heard from him?”

Chief Dooley scans the crowd with his hands on his hips, waiting for someone to speak up, but everyone remains still and quiet. He lets out a frustrated sigh.

“Anyone catches a whisper in the wind from or about that kid, I wanna hear about it yesterday.”

_He must have died, _Peggy thinks simply. And it’s probably a little calloused and overdramatic of her to jump to that conclusion, but she is still too deep in her grief over Steve to care all that much.

She’d known in continuing her work with the SSR stateside that death would still be something she’d have to face, but she’d thought the odds would be better—like working with the Commandos instead of a regular regiment. The stakes were higher, yes, but agents—_Agents_—would be better prepared.

Apparently not.

She can’t fling herself back into the paperwork on her desk after Chief Dooley stalks back into his office and shuts the door, but she can’t muster much emotion beyond numb acceptance, either.

But two and a half hours later, long after she’s convinced herself to get back to what’s in front of her, Agent Thompson is trudging through the front door with a briefcase in hand, looking bedraggled but grinning triumphantly.

There’s a flurry of movement, including Chief Dooley reentering the bullpen and making a beeline for Agent Thompson. Thompson brandishes the briefcase, hands it to the chief, and Dooley grabs him affectionately by the back of the head.

“Oh, you indestructible bastard, you.”

They’re both grinning ear to ear, and a veritable gaggle of agents are slapping Thompson on the shoulders and back.

Peggy observes the scene silently.

She can see very clearly who Agent Jack Thompson is now—not a friend, hardly an ally. A man out for glory, not truth.

Almost to herself, she nods and returns to her designated paperwork.

* * *

Peggy looks in the mirror, fusses with her hair, her earrings, the neckline of her dress. She thinks it’s a little ridiculous—it’s a funeral, not a beauty pageant. But she remembers the way Jack used to be so liberal with his pomade, his crisp suits and immaculately shined shoes.

_In memoriam,_ she decides.

A part of her wants to keep stalling, but she’s too wise now to fool herself with the notion that it will really delay her mourning.

She gives her dress one last smoothing, tucks one last strand of hair behind her ear, and shuts off the light on her way out of the bedroom.

* * *

In 1947, Daniel hands her the car keys, but he doesn’t want her to go alone. He insists on a protection detail for her.

“At the very least, let me come with you,” he half-offers, half-demands as they stand outside Thompson’s room, bickering quietly as though shouting could rouse him from the anesthesia and hypovolemic unconsciousness.

“Thank you, Daniel, but one of us needs to stay here. We can take care of ourselves—” she allows herself a moment of slight sentimentality “—but we’re the best protection Jack has got.” _And back to business._ “Besides, I doubt whoever did this will make another move so soon.”

They had cased the hotel room immediately after receiving the call. The fact that Thompson had been alive enough to make it to the hospital meant that the shooter hadn’t actually cared about eliminating him.

Or else they were very bad at their job.

But they couldn’t be too bad at their job. After all, they had been clean enough to knock judging by the lack of signs of forced entry. And clean enough to use a silencer since no one reported hearing a shot. The report from the woman who found Jack near-dead on the floor also indicated that whoever had fired the shot had closed the door as they left. Not an amateur move.

And all of this even overlooked the fact that ordinary people didn’t know the SSR even still existed after V-E Day, let alone attempt to wage war on them. The mastermind of their present circumstance wouldn’t send a slouch to do this.

If the shooter had needed something from the room itself, they would have waited until Chief Thompson had checked out and attacked the housekeeping staff rather than risk taking on a well-trained agent.

Which meant that Thompson himself had been in possession of something valuable.

Peggy had been able to think of a few different things “valuable” would apply to—the Arena Club key, for one—but that was in her possession. Not that anyone else knew that. The chief would still be the logical target if someone wanted the key back.

But her blood had run cold when a brown folder flashed in her mind.

She had gone to Jack’s suitcase, still open on the bed with shoes and ties messily strewn across the interior, and rifled through it, even removing the contents entirely to get to the false bottom and feeling around for extra zipper compartments.

But the dossier labeled “M. Carter” simply wasn’t there.

Of course, there was a possibility that Jack had burned it—that was the only sure-fire way to erase information this potentially sensitive—but even that was a stretch. Thompson wasn’t necessarily a vindictive man, but he wasn’t stupid. Peggy knew that whatever was in that file—and she truly had no idea what kind of falsified rubbish it could be (although that didn’t negate its apparent face-value)—he would want to keep it as a sort of insurance policy on her, some measure of leverage.

And now, standing across from Daniel, who is still in the dark on that particular theft, she is certain that this is a long game. The only reason the shooter would still be in play at the moment would be if whoever had hired them needed Jack off the board completely to squash the possibility of revealing their identity. And vulnerable as a chest wound made the chief, their enemies also had to know that he had already become the SSR’s securest asset for the foreseeable future. They had to know that the agency would be upping their game in as many sectors as they could, meaning another strike right now would be reckless, irresponsible, and damn near impossible.

“If they’re smart, they’ll bide their time to observe and look for holes in our defenses,” Peggy continues aloud. “And if they’re not, they’ll die.”

Daniel grimaces. “Peggy—”

“That’s the long and short of it, Daniel. Stay with him, please. I can manage on my own for an hour or two. I’ll be back after a shower with dinner.”

She turns on her heel and strides off before he can object further.

The silence in the car is stifling, so she turns on the radio for a few streets. But everyone is singing about love and loss, and Peggy wonders distantly if Jack has a girlfriend they need to be trying to reach. In any case, they’ll need to call New York, open up his personnel file, and contact his parents. She switches the radio off again and rolls the window down.

She decides there’s not much point to running a detection route; Howard’s house is the only thing on that hill. If she’s being followed, there’s no throwing them off her trail or obfuscating her true destination.

And if she’s being followed, her (foolish) would-be assailant is going to find themselves confronting a very low-on-patience super-spy and a chest full of lead.

Appropriate payback.

Peggy manages to drift through the halls to her guest bedroom undiscovered by either of the Jarvises, Howard, or any of his…less long-term guests.

How funny, she thinks, that nothing in the room has changed from when she made the bed for what she believed to be the last time only a few hours prior, and yet it all looks so different to her now.

When she’d woken up this morning, she’d felt accomplished. At ease. Daniel had been on her mind, and there had finally been certainty in her heart.

There had been peace there.

She supposes, in retrospect, that the peace should have tipped her off that everything was about to hit the fan.

She considers running a bath for herself, but it feels too luxurious, and the thought of luxuriating while Jack fights for his life—

Right. Shower it is.

She locks the bathroom door, her earlier “let-them-come” bravado receding some to leave her more than a little on edge. It’s clear she’s a primary target—if not in body then clearly in reputation—and while she really can believe that she’s probably safe for the time being since Jack took the hit, she’s still better safe than sorry.

Peggy unzips her skirt, lets it pool around her ankles. She unbuttons her blouse and slips it off her shoulders. On her way to start the water, she notices that her reflection sports redder eyes than she’d anticipated.

She strips down to bareness and stands face-first under the spray. She can feel the curls falling out of her hair as it turns limp around her shoulders like a shawl.

Realistically, she knows there’s nothing she could have done.

At least, she _thinks_ there’s nothing she could have done.

Well, actually she can think of at least one thing she could have done that genuinely might have prevented this: not breaking Dottie Underwood out of prison.

The idea that this was Dottie’s handiwork nags at her as she lets the hot water trail down her skin. Dottie was cleaner than this, sure—wouldn’t have been so sloppy as to shoot Jack in the right lung rather than aim left for his heart. Wouldn’t have been so sloppy as to not have gone for his head, in all honesty.

But maybe this isn’t about cleanliness or training anymore.

Maybe it’s about sending a message and getting to Peggy by any means necessary, through Jack, or anyone else that happens to be standing in the doorway.

This may be more than a game of cat-and-mouse now.

And whether or not Dottie fired off that round, it does nothing to ease Peggy’s conscience; in her mind, she’s got to take the blame for this. She’s doesn’t have the slightest clue what’s in those papers, but it doesn’t matter. No matter how she slices it, it’s her file that got Jack shot.

And suddenly, Peggy can’t catch her breath and has to brace herself with a hand against the steam-warmed tile of the shower. She backs out of the spray, the jets of water pouring out from the showerhead all at once too driving and oppressive.

This is the second time.

With every blink she can picture Jack’s funeral like it’s already happened.

Another man lost on her watch.

Her morbid vision does include a girlfriend—a fiancée, actually. She’s a pretty little blonde thing, 5’4, dancer, and she’s crying at the edge of the grave in Mrs. Thompson’s arms, robbed of the chance to share that title.

But aside from this nameless, imaginary—_heaven above, let her be imaginary_—fiancée, a distraught mother, a frail grandmother, and a stoic father, there’s only her and Daniel. No other friends, not even any other agents. And while it’s not exactly a revelation, Peggy Carter is nevertheless struck by the very real sensation that Jack Thompson has not put friendship very high on his list of priorities.

In Peggy’s professional and extremely experienced opinion, daymares are always worse than nightmares.

At least a nightmare has the definitive end of waking.

“Oh,” she says to herself, for no reason other than that she needs some kind of movement in her throat and chest and mouth to ground her. It’s enough to relieve some of the pressure swelling inside her, like a well-placed incision, and she straightens her spine just a bit.

She finishes her shower as fast as she has the energy for and towels off with equal speed. Peggy pauses at the door, listening for movement on the other side before she unlocks and opens it. Halfway to the dresser, she remembers her clothes are in a suitcase beside Daniel’s desk back at the SSR. The thought of returning to the outfit she’d been wearing when she found out about Chief Thompson turns her stomach, but she doesn’t seem to have much choice.

When she emerges from her room, hair still noticeably wet, dressed in the same clothes but feeling at least a little fresher, she passes Mr. Jarvis in the hall.

“Oh, Miss Carter,” he says with a polite, confused smile. “I didn’t realize you’d returned.”

Peggy swallows and forces a smile. “Not for long, I’m afraid, Mr. Jarvis. Chief Thompson’s been shot.” Her voice cracks a little on the last word, and she clears her throat to cover it up as best she can. Mr. Jarvis blanches at the topic, face falling immediately, and Peggy curses internally; it’s still all too close to home. “I only stopped through for a shower,” she assures him. “I’m on my way back to the hospital now.”

He struggles to find something to say, opening and closing his mouth several times. “Miss Carter…”

“I’ll likely only be seeing you passingly for the next few days. Weeks, even,” she barrels on brusquely. “It’s actually probably safer for you and Ana and Howard if I stay away from the manor entirely for the immediate future. So, take care, Mr. Jarvis, and contact the office if you should need me for any sort of urgent matter.”

She starts to make her way past him, but in a wholly uncharacteristic move, Mr. Jarvis grabs her wrist.

“Chief Thompson…” he starts, brows drawn in a deep frown. “Is he alright?”

Peggy blinks rapidly and looks at the wall behind him when she answers. “I don’t know. His condition was rather dire when he arrived. He made it out of surgery and is resting for now, but being shot in the chest is, well…notoriously fatal. They can’t rule out complications.”

He cocks his head to catch Peggy’s gaze. “And you?” His voice is barely above a whisper. “Are _you_ alright, Miss Carter?”

She smiles humorlessly and rolls her eyes at the stinging feeling in her sinuses signaling oncoming tears. “It’s been a trying month, Mr. Jarvis, as I know you know. I’ll be alright when we can put this all behind us.”

He nods and releases his light grip on her. “Well, if you or either of your chiefs should need anything, we are only a ring away.”

She swipes at the one tear that had managed to escape her iron will and sniffs. “Thank you, Mr. Jarvis.”

She drives to a deli and picks up a pair of sandwiches for herself and Daniel, though she doubts either of them will do much more than nibble the rest of the night. But doing something, even something as benign as a sandwich run, is better than doing nothing.

_“How about collecting the dinner orders?” Peggy asked, brow raised. She was seventy percent positive he was going to laugh and bite back with a derisive comment._

_But he was out of his depth, and he knew it._

_Thompson leaned against the doorway, a wry smile on his lips. “You know what, Marge? I’m gonna do that for you,” he conceded._

_And…he actually didn’t look too bitter about it._

Peggy shakes the memory out of her head.

She decides right then and there that Thompson is going to live, if not because he’s simply too proud to die from something so messy as a botched assassination, then because he’s on the verge of becoming a better man.

And for all his faults, Jack Thompson always sees a project through to fruition.

At the hospital, Daniel is visibly relieved when Peggy steps through the door. She sits directly and unceremoniously on the floor beside him and rummages around in the brown paper sack to offer Daniel his turkey on sourdough.

As Peggy had suspected, they only manage to nibble.

At 10 PM—despite Peggy’s heated protests, the flashing of her badge, and her insistence that they’re the closest available family Jack’s got—a nurse kicks them out for the night, leaving them to sleep in the waiting room, curled into one another.

“It’s alright, Peggy,” Daniel assures her. “Carrington and Thomas are on their way to stand guard and we’ve got five agents posted outside the hospital.”

She knows she’ll fall asleep trying to keep watch after the day it’s been, so for lack of a better option, she agrees to the plan and settles further into his shoulder.

Still, tired as she is, she doesn’t sleep deeply or comfortably, and she’s sure that goes double for Daniel, twisted as he is with his prosthetic still on. Despite the physicality of contorting to the rigid shape of the seats, it’s not really the chairs that make their slumber fitful.

Not hers, anyway.

Peggy jerks awake every time she hears footsteps pass by, fully sure that a nurse is coming to tell them Jack Thompson is dead.

* * *

The next morning, Peggy and Daniel are up at an ungodly hour. But, looking desperate and disheveled as they do with their dark bags and rumpled clothes and unkempt hair—though Daniel’s fared better than Peggy’s—they warrant some sympathy and manage to worm their way into Jack’s room a little earlier than visiting hours strictly allow.

They sit.

They wait.

A few nurses come in and fuss with needles in Jack’s arms and bags of clear fluid and blood pressure cuffs, and Peggy is unnerved by the absolute stillness about him as they move his limp limbs like a macabre plaything.

She’s seen Thompson knocked out—hell, she’s knocked him out herself—but he looked like he still had fight in him then, like if someone tried to move him, he’d snap awake with the express purpose of breaking their nose.

Not now.

The nurses leave.

“You should head home for a bit,” Peggy suggests quietly.

Daniel shakes his head. “After we get an update.”

They lapse back into silence.

About ten minutes later, they get their update.

Daniel doesn’t go home.

They spend another hour stringing together disjointed thoughts and holding stilted conversation before their attention is drawn sharply to the bed.

Jack stirs, groans faintly, face transitioning quickly from the peace of drug-induced sleep to the painful state of semi-wakefulness. He inhales sharply, and it turns into a cough followed by a louder groan.

Daniel shifts forward in his seat, and Peggy springs to her feet. She almost touches his shoulder in comfort, but her hand falters before it can make contact, and she rests the tips of her fingers against the sheets by his arm instead.

“You’re alright, Jack,” Daniel assures him. “You’re alright.”

He doesn’t fully wake before he settles back into a deeper sleep, which both comforts and worries Peggy. She’s grateful he can return to unconsciousness, certain the pain would be nearly too much to bear awake, but if Jack could just open his eyes, just for a few minutes, she’ll feel a lot more at ease.

But over the next two days, even though Thompson doesn’t provide much more than sporadically recurring episodes of his little preview of consciousness, the concern does start to naturally ebb.

Daniel goes home and stops into the SSR to update the other agents on the chief’s condition. Convinced at last that he’s not going to die the moment she steps out of the room—because if he’s going to die, she’s confident he’ll do it when she’s not there just to vex her—Peggy allows herself to start spending more time at the office, too, trading off in shifts at the hospital with Daniel and burrowing into the investigation at hand.

When the phone rings on the third day, there’s a moment where she’s back in Russia, remembering the way Jack had frozen at the sound of gunfire. The shrill tone of the ring has the roles reversed, and she can almost hear him yelling at her to move with the same words she’d told him. _Had that really been a year ago?_

She picks it up at last with a brisk, “SSR, Agent Carter,” by way of greeting. She convinces herself it’s one of the agents Daniel dispatched sometime in the last 24 hours with a lead to report.

But then the voice on the other end speaks, and she knows it more personally than any other agent. All her hope drains out of her heels.

_“Peggy, it’s Daniel.”_

“Daniel.” She can’t bring herself to say more.

_“He’s awake.”_

And she very nearly drops the phone.

“Oh, thank goodness,” she breathes. “Alright, I’m on my way.”

_“I’d leave the legal pad at the office, Peg,” _Daniel adds before she can hang up. _“You’re not gonna get very much out of him.”_

Peggy snorts a laugh. “Honestly, Daniel, the thought of questioning hadn’t even crossed my mind.” 

When she arrives in the doorway of Jack’s room, she’s met with an odd combination of relief and anxiety. It _is_ wonderfully encouraging to see Jack sitting up in his bed, eyes open and staring at Daniel as he hovers by the foot of it, making polite, one-sided conversation—probably bringing him up to speed on his injury. But there’s no denying that Jack still looks like absolute hell. For all the time he’s spent sleeping, the skin under his eyes is discolored with deep bags. His hair is missing all its normal careful grooming, and he’s got more beard on his face than Peggy had consciously imagined him being capable of growing. She supposes she’d noticed when she sat by his side, but everything comes into sharper focus with him awake.

He turns his head with cautious slowness when Daniel looks over and greets her. Peggy flashes a smile and steps into the room proper.

Daniel excuses himself, and Peggy knows it’s because he’s grateful for the chance to walk and stretch. Even with the desk work being chief of the SSR entailed, he was still accustomed to being on his feet at least part of the day. So, she smiles at him as he spares one last glance through the window before moving out of sight; he’s more than earned this respite.

And then she fixes her gaze on Thompson again, suddenly a little nervous and restless. This time she does allow her hand to find its way to his shoulder.

“It’s good to see you awake, Chief. You had all of us quite on edge. How are you feeling?”

Jack stares up at her blankly from under his brows, one slightly quirked, and even pale, bleary-eyed, and a little sweaty, it is _so very Jack Thompson _that her spirits are lifted despite knowing he’s in tremendous pain.

“As to be expected, I suppose,” she acquiesces. “Can I get you anything? Water, for starters?”

He nods, every movement still slow and accompanied by a wince. She moves to his other side and pours from the pitcher by the bedside table into the little glass. She has to hold it for him, help support his head while he drinks, which she can tell he’s not happy about. But what else can they do?

The act is a small recompense in her mind.

Peggy places the water back on the table and helps him settle back into his pillows. She clears her throat hesitantly, clasping her hands in front of her.

“I don’t wish to overwork you while you recover, Chief Thompson, but I know you’re like me—you’ll want answers and something more to do than simply convalesce. If not in body, then at least in mind. We don’t have any solid leads, but I do have a potential motive.” She reaches for the chair behind her and sinks into it with her customary grace. “I…I haven’t told Daniel yet because I wanted confirmation from you before we moved forward with any conviction.” The words are sticking to the roof of her mouth despite the number of times she’d rehearsed them; this speech had been a welcome distraction from the running ticker _He’s going to die, he’s going to die, he’s going to die. _“When you were packing to head home, did you…were you still in possession of that dossier? The file with my initials?”

It takes him a minute to process the words; she assumes his mind is still quite foggy, slow with lingering sleep and the aching of his wound. But then she sees recognition widen his eyes before he closes them quickly in a grimace.

_Damn._

“Right,” she breathes shakily. “At least we know what we’re looking for now.”

Thompson considers this. His voice is rough when he musters the strength to speak. “Was…any of it…true?”

She smiles sadly and shakes her head. “No. But whoever’s after me apparently doesn’t know that. I suppose none of it sounds much like a stretch. Still, shoddy intelligence. I’m terribly sorry you got caught in the crosshairs of it all, Chief Thompson.” Peggy avoids his eyes, shifting her jacket on her shoulders without touching it. “It seems our pasts, all the truths that go with them and the untruths they inspire…” She rubs at a spot on her palm. “I guess we never really can escape them, can we?”

A moment passes before his sandpaper whisper reaches her ears again.

“Carter.”

Peggy clenches her jaw but meets his gaze. He stares at her, hard, for a few seconds. At the edges of her vision, she can see how shallow his breathing is and feels a twinge of discomfort in her lower abdomen, remembering how much it hurt to breathe deeply when the rebar wound was healing. She can hardly imagine the pain in his chest.

Finally, one corner of his mouth twitches.

“Give ‘em hell.”

A look of pure determination settles on Peggy Carter’s face. “They’ll wish I was that lenient, Chief.”

* * *

Steve has an arm wrapped securely around Peggy as they walk into the church. It’s modest—brown pews, white walls, and carpet that well-worn church-green that doesn’t let you imagine you’re anywhere else.

It’s not a place she could have imagined Jack when she knew him best, but it fits the image of the man that had come to take the space left by Agent Thompson.

It’s a little funny in her mind that they never held a funeral for _that _man, thoroughly dead and gone as he’s been.

There’s a picture board up at the front by the pulpit that catches Peggy’s eye.

She pats Steve’s hand. “Why don’t you pick a seat, Darling? I’ll join you in a moment.”

He kisses the side of her head and obliges, and she makes her way up to the base of the steps.

In the center of the board, there’s a photo of Jack with Elouise in his lap, the both of them laughing with their eyes closed, completely unaware of the camera. Scattered around it are a lot of other candids, a couple of family portraits, and one or two office photos of all Jack’s fellow lawyers lined up to represent the firm.

There’s none with him in any of his various uniforms over the years, no dress whites or NYPD blues. It’s all the reborn Jack Thompson. In fact, there’s only a few photographs from before ’54—most of them have Elouise or at least one of the kids.

Almost unconsciously, Peggy’s hand reaches up to touch the corner of the center picture.

“You did well, Thompson,” she whispers.

And she hopes that wherever the dead go, he can hear her.

* * *

“What?”

It’s 1949, and Peggy has been staring at Daniel Sousa for what feels like several minutes.

Daniel shakes his head and holds up a hand in surrender. “I couldn’t tell you, Peg. I just got the call from the New York office.” He takes his arm out of his crutch’s top loop, turns to partially sit against the edge of her desk. “They said Thompson packed up the last of his stuff this afternoon, shook hands with every agent and walked out. Everyone over there assumed we already knew he was leaving. Hell, he probably told ‘em we did.”

Her first thought is Fennhoff, maybe an associate—because why _wouldn’t _there be others for them to deal with? She doesn’t always agree with Thompson, of course, and the choices he makes over at the East Coast bureau, but she doesn’t want him walking into traffic like Agent Yauch.

She shuts down that train of thought. There’s only one thing to do to assuage concern: act.

Her fingers work the rotary dial expertly and Daniel sits quietly beside her as she puts in a call to the New York branch, insisting that they track him down, check that Fennhoff is still being held securely. She calls Howard and thoroughly grills him over the possibility of any of his inventions or concoctions being stolen and subsequently used to make a man do things he would never do otherwise.

_“That’s called love, Peg, and if I could figure out how to patent and sell it…Well, I’m already a very rich man.”_

Once she’s off the phone with Howard, she looks sharply at Daniel. “And you?”

His eyebrows shoot up, and his look of surprise would be comical if the situation was different. “Me?”

“Yes, as chief of the West Coast SSR, you don’t have any connections to lean on?”

He straightens, but he doesn’t move for the phone. “I do,” he says slowly. Peggy stares at him expectantly. “Listen, Peggy, I don’t feel like that’s what’s going on here.”

Her expression is one of incredulity. “I can’t understand what you mean by that.”

Daniel takes his time formulating his response, and Peggy fights the urge to drum her fingers expectantly. “I guess…I just don’t think he’s in any danger. Sounds like he’s been planning this for a while. I think this was his choice.”

Which inspires a completely _different _fear of death in her—Time Three.

Her head tilts almost of its own accord. “And why is that, Chief Sousa? You honestly expect me to believe that Jack Thompson simply walked out on his position of power of his own volition without any warning or ceremony or recognition?”

Daniel looks doubtful in his contemplation now, but eventually, he meets Peggy’s eyes again. He sighs. “Yeah. For some reason, I’ve got this feeling in my gut that that’s exactly what he did.” He slips his arm back through his crutch and stands. “Look, if you’re really worried, go ahead and keep making calls. I don’t really want to stop you if that’s what you think you need to do. I just…I don’t think he’s in trouble. I think he’s just tired. I mean, you saw him when he was still here in L.A.” His eyebrows draw together. “Getting hurt…Almost _dying…_It throws you off-balance.”

Peggy feels the hard-set lines of determination in her face soften.

“And it’s hard to stay in the place that took that balance away from you. Lotta bad memories to deal with. I still don’t think Thompson's quite got his balance back yet, and the SSR wasn’t doing much to help with that.”

Daniel leaves Peggy to her phone calls not long after that, and while she trusts his opinion, she’s not entirely convinced that Jack’s not saying some kind of more permanent goodbye.

So she calls Howard again and asks for a favor, and a few hours later finds herself pounding on the apartment door his file listed as his home address.

“Jack Thompson, if you don’t open this door, I will not hesitate to break it down myself,” she yells, the side of her fist still hard at work dashing against the wood.

She draws the attention of a few different neighbors, but it’s of no consequence. Peggy Carter is very much on the verge of using her bag to bust the doorknob off the door when at last it swings open, and she is met with a rumpled, undershirt-and-shorts-clad Jack Thompson, who, as it were, is also sporting an impressive scowl.

“Carter? What the hell are you doing out here?”

“Are you alright?” she asks with no pretense.

“I mean, I was sleeping off an evening at the bar when someone started making a pretty loud racket outside my flat, so…” He looks at her pointedly, crossing his arms. “Been better by that mark, I guess. You gonna answer my question?”

“Clearly, I came to see you.”

Thompson’s eyebrows shoot up, and he leans against the doorway. “Christ, Marge. I guess I’m touched, but you’d do that to good ol’ Sousa? Danny boy’s gonna strangle me with his bare hands.”

Peggy’s shoulders fall as she sighs exasperatedly and rolls her eyes. He seems to be thoroughly himself—a blessing and a curse. “Oh, do shut your mouth, Jack Thompson.” Then the relief of the reality of him being absolutely fine takes the edge out of her tone. “When the New York office called today, I thought…I was concerned about you.”

Understanding dawns on his face. He straightens and steps back out of the doorway. “Why don’t you come in for a minute?”

Peggy searches his face before accepting his invitation. She sits down at the table while he puts on a pot of coffee. He goes to his bedroom and puts on some more appropriate pants, then ambles around his tiny kitchen in silence, taking down two mugs and drying a few other dishes in his sink to pass the time.

She allows herself to glance around his apartment. It’s not exactly cozy. There’s a few creature comforts—radio on the table just in front of Peggy and facing Jack’s chair, a pair of boxing gloves hung up on peg in the hallway, a framed photograph in the living room of a girl that looks too young to be courted by a man Jack’s age. But the walls are generally bare. And maybe Peggy’s spent too much time surrounded by men with art—too much time flipping through Steve’s old sketchbooks, too much time in Howard’s Malibu home with its dozens of portraits hung about—but the lack of it now unsettles her.

When the drip machine finishes brewing, he pours with a remarkably steady hand for a man halfway through a hangover and sets one mug down in front of her.

“Thank you,” she says quietly.

Jack nods once in acknowledgement as he slides into the chair across from her. He takes a sip before looking her in the eye.

“You could have called, you know,” he starts without any real venom.

“I made a lot of phone calls,” she replies matter-of-factly. “None of them did much to boost my confidence that you weren’t brainwashed, captured, dead or dying. You know how I am—I prefer to have incontrovertible evidence in front of me.”

He smiles a little at that.

_“You_ could have called,” she counters. “Why didn’t you tell us you were leaving?”

“I wanted to get out _quietly,”_ he says, simpering over the rim of his mug.

“I’m not apologizing.”

He takes another sip. “Wasn’t expecting you to. Look.” His expression is cautious as he places his drink on the table. “If there’s one thing I pride myself on, it’s my ability to read a room. To sum up the long-term of a situation like a front page story. And I could tell my time with the SSR was up. Vann was hungry for the job, and he’d done his share to earn it. I needed a change, anyway.”

She studies him carefully. There’s a troubled look in his eyes, but no different than what she’d started to be able to pick up on after Russia.

“Thompson.” She inhales through her nose and changes course. “Jack.”

Hearing his first name from her puts him on high alert. She notices the tense set of his shoulders when he tilts his chin at her, signaling for her to continue.

“Have you…” There’s no real way to tiptoe around the question. So she doesn’t. “Have you been to the VA?”

His mouth forms a hard line. “What would I do that for, Carter?”

“I’m merely—” She looks away and lets her eyes scan the wood of the table as she continues. “There are a lot of men still dealing with combat fatigue, and Daniel pointed out to me that the…” Her gaze moves to Jack’s face again, and she clears her throat lightly. “The shooting may have been an added issue for you.”

He nods slowly and runs his hand along his coffee mug. “I’m not like those guys,” he says definitively. “I didn’t come back feeling pain from imaginary wounds or running scared at the sound of a backfiring engine. I’m hearty stock.”

“Of that last statement, I have no doubt.” She lifts her cup, lets the warmth of the coffee slip down her throat for a few seconds, deep in thought.

This is about the reaction she expected to the suggestion, but what can she do? Even if she manages to knock him out and drag him to a psychiatrist, he can’t be forced to talk. And it would certainly fray and likely destroy the tenuous-at-best friendship and trust they’d managed to cobble together over the past few years.

“When Daniel told me New York called, I was…” She tightens her hold on her drink so he can’t see the slight tremor in her fingers. “I was convinced that the next call I received would be to inform me that you’d shot yourself. I don’t want anything to happen to you, Jack. And if that means your pride has to take a backseat, then I’ll gladly be the one to insist.”

The frown that had drawn his features tight had abated at some point during her confession. Now he nods slowly, not meeting Peggy’s eyes. When he finally looks up, he gives her a small smile—small but genuine.

“Thank you,” he says simply.

And Peggy Carter noticeably relaxes. Because there’s something like profound gratitude that she can see in Jack Thompson, and she wonders if he thought, perhaps, that when he did die, no one would care beyond the loss of a chief, a decorated figurehead, a necessarily pruned branch on a family’s prize-winning tree.

Maybe their almost-companionship is a little stronger than tenuous after all.

Another moment of silence passes. “I am tired,” he continues at last. “But it’s not a giving up kind of tired. You don’t have to worry about that, Carter, I’m a stubborn bastard.” And Peggy laughs a little despite herself, further easing the tension in the room. “I’ve got a few more debts to settle before I can die.”

She returns his smile with reserve and takes another drink to chase the last of her shaking away.

“So then, former Agent Thompson,” she says, brushing a stray ringlet out of her eyes, “what comes next for you?”

He smirks into his coffee. “Well, as a matter of fact, it’s Officer Thompson now. Got myself a gig with New York’s finest.”

Peggy is visibly shocked at that. “A police officer?” The idea of “Jack Thompson, Beat Cop” is so incongruent with her schema of the man that she has to look down to hide her incredulous smile and bite her lip to hold back her laugh.

Jack catches her anyway. “Yeah, yeah, Marge, laugh it up,” he says. But he sounds amused, too, and when Peggy looks up, she sees him fighting a little grin of his own. “I’m trading in the title but not the badge. Need to have my hand on some kind of wheel, after all.”

He asks her about L.A., how Daniel’s holding up as chief. She tells him that she and Howard have been discussing plans for an overhaul of the SSR.

It’s the closest to pleasant they’ve ever been one-on-one, and it’s…_odd_. Peggy thinks, not for the first time, that under different circumstances—without a war, maybe—they might have made good friends.

Eventually, Peggy thanks him for the coffee and makes to wash her mug out.

Jack taps his fingers on the table. “Eh, don’t worry about it, Marge. It’s not your job to clean up.”

And she wonders if that’s his way of tentatively calling her an equal—not automatically designating her the dishwasher and cleaner in the room.

He walks her to the door. She steps over the threshold and turns back to look him over.

“Be well, Thompson. I hope it all works out for you."

He rests a forearm on the doorframe above his head. “You and Sousa ever come this way again, rest assured the streets are gonna be a little safer than when you were here last.”

She tilts her head in consideration, never breaking eye contact with him. “The city’s always safe when it’s in your hands, Jack.”

He chuckles. “Enjoy your flight, Carter.”

When she’s halfway down the hall, she hears his door click closed with a heavy finality and feels a momentary urge to look back.

She resists.

* * *

“83 years ain’t bad, is it?”

Peggy turns to find Elouise standing at her elbow, dressed in a blue and green floral print. It reminds her of the Hawaiian shirts Jack used to rag on Daniel about so adamantly. Maybe he’d stopped hating the pattern when he saw how beautifully his wife wore it.

“Not bad at all,” Peggy says.

“He wouldn’t have made it this far without you, you know.”

Peggy scoffs and lets her arm drop to her side. “I think you’re giving me far more credit than I deserve. Credit that rightfully goes to you, my dear.” Then she grows somber and takes Elouise’s hand. “How are you holding up through all this?”

Elouise gives her best attempt at a smile. “About as well as can be expected. I kept walking into the sunroom to ask him if he could make a call for me. And then when he wasn’t sitting there with his book, I’d remember.” She chuckles in a soft, sad way that manages to not be entirely humorless—as if it might actually be funny if it was a story or a movie and not her life. “And then I’d just feel so silly because I wouldn’t be asking him to call the florist if I didn’t need flowers for his funeral.”

Peggy squeezes her hand. “It’ll take time to do away with those little habits, I think.”

Elouise turns her head to look at the board of photographs. Her eyes are far, far away. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be rid of them.”

* * *

“Sweetheart?”

It’s 1954 when Peggy Carter looks up from the paper to see Steve holding out a blue envelope.

“What’s that?” she asks, frowning as she inspects the handwriting scrawled across the front of the envelope in his hand. It’s vaguely familiar but unplaceable with any measure of real certainty.

“Don’t know,” Steve says with a shrug. “I try not to make a habit of looking too closely at mail addressed to you.”

Peggy sucks her teeth good-naturedly in response. She takes the letter from Steve, eyes darting to the return address and the name that goes along with it, and her breath catches in her throat.

_Unbelievable._

Her fingers trace over the ink as though it’s raised, or perhaps as though it will rub away beneath her skin, a mere trick or joke. But nothing of the sort happens; she moves her thumb off the writing, and nothing’s different. It’s still there, entirely unchanged.

Peggy, being Peggy, is struck with the grim confidence that this is it—_this_ is the goodbye she tried to brace herself for all those years ago when she threatened to knock down the door of his flat.

Why else would _Jack Thompson _be writing her? It wasn’t like they sent each other Christmas newsletters.

Come to think of it, where the hell did he even get her address?

And this is the fourth time. The fear isn’t as piercing as the times preceding this one—in fact, Peggy doesn’t even really register it as Time Four. It feels more like the other shoe finally dropping, borrowed hours finally accounted for, bill come due.

She flips the envelope over and peels the flap up, and it’s…

It’s _cardstock._

Not exactly what she expected given the stakes.

She pulls it free—

And it’s _embossed._

Okay, _definitely _not what she expected.

In fact, there’s no sign of tragedy at all.

Because she’s holding a wedding invitation.

A wave of profound relief washes over her.

Good God, he had _survived. _And by the looks of it, he has plans to continue surviving.

She reads the two names over and over—_the union of Jack Thompson and Elouise Arnold—_and wonders what kind of woman Jack managed to settle down with. She imagines, perhaps a little unkindly, that she’s probably a bit of a pushover. If Jack’s ways could be changed by a strong woman, the two of them would have had a much smoother relationship. There’s a distinct chance the woman Jack is marrying is the exact kind of person Peggy Carter cannot stand. It almost makes her laugh. He _would _spite her in the one thing she really has no right to voice an opinion on.

Steve’s voice breaks into her thoughts. “Everything okay?”

She chuckles lightly and smiles at him. “Yes. Wonderful, actually. An old colleague’s getting married.”

“Hey, that’s great,” Steve says, returning her smile. She offers him the invitation, and he looks it over, already knowing it’s safer for the both of them and their cover if he chooses not to make an appearance. “You gonna go?”

“You know what?” Peggy twists her own wedding band on her finger. “I think I will.”

* * *

The service is sweet. Danny and Thea speak. Liza, too. Peggy is fairly positive that Daniel would have stepped up to the podium if he’d been in generally better health as of late. Elouise, of course, goes last. The family all cries, but they cry in a way that Peggy finds to be very reminiscent of Jack, like an homage—quiet, dignified, rich with a composure that surprises everyone, including themselves.

She wonders if Elouise had always cried like that or if it’s something she learned from her husband.

Either way, it’s comforting to know he lives on in the little things.

It strikes her then that she’s going to miss responding to Marge.

* * *

The fifth and final time Peggy Carter actively, _falsely, _believes Jack Thompson is dead comes in the form of a Navy Cross and a single dog tag.

Her pulse picks up the instant she opens the velvet-lined box, and she fumbles with the little folded note that falls out of the lid—

_Don’t have much need for this anymore. I’d appreciate if you could send it back where it came from._

“Oh, please, please, no,” she whispers, rushing for the phone.

The number had been scrawled in a Christmas card years ago, but Peggy’s got a memory like a steel trap, and it doesn’t take long for her to call the right digit sequence to mind.

Elouise picks up, which doesn’t exactly subdue the pounding pace of her heartbeat in her ears.

“Elouise, it’s Peggy. Is Jack there?”

Without a second of hesitation—not even bothering to ask why Peggy sounds so stressed or if everything’s alright, as if she can tell on tone alone that time is of the essence—she replies, _“I’ll go get him.”_

Peggy prays into the quiet of the line that she hasn’t just sent Elouise to find a body in her bedroom.

_“Peggy?”_

“Oh my God,” she sighs. “Jack, is that you?”

_“Well, yeah, you just sent my wife to get me. Everything okay?”_

“I should be asking you that, on account of what just arrived on my desk.” She glances back over her shoulder at the box like it’s holding an Isodyne nuke.

_“Oh, you got my package?” _he asks a little too hopefully.

Her anxiety starts to transition to irritation. He can’t possibly be this nonchalant, this oblivious. “I did,” she grits out. “And what, exactly, were you hoping to accomplish in sending these to me?”

_“I was hoping you’d use your special S.H.I.E.L.D. mail and forward that to the Department of the Interior or War or wherever it needs to be returned to. Did I not put the note in there?”_

“God Almighty, Jack Thompson, will you quit that!” She rubs at the wrinkles in her forehead that have been a long-time coming. “Is scaring me half to death on your to-do-list every decade?”

_“What?” _he asks around a confused chuckle. _“What are you—oh. Oh.”_

Yes. He is exactly that oblivious.

Peggy waits in silence for his answer, now that he understands the implications of his little stunt.

Finally, he sighs into the receiver. _“Look. If I’m being honest, there were some times a few months ago when I wouldn’t have laughed at your concern at all.”_

And that has the tension that was starting to fade amping back up. She feels her stomach clench.

Had she missed the _one time _she actually needed to be on alert?

In her defense, Peggy Carter does not devote time each and every day to contemplating Jack Thompson’s well-being. In fact, she goes weeks at a time—sometimes months—not hearing from him or even thinking of his name. She’s got a family, she’s got her own post-war scars to soothe (Steve’s, too), and—to top it all off—she’s got an entire covert intelligence organization to manage.

She’s not truly mad at herself, but the news is…dispiriting.

“Well, are you…alright now?” she asks.

_“Yeah, I am. Well. Getting there, at least. I, uh, I went to the VA, ended up staying a spell. Inpatient. But…” _Jack pauses for a moment. _“Elouise was here, you know? You don’t have to feel like you’re the only one watching out for me like that anymore, Carter. She knows everything.” _He must be able to tell she’s about to ask and beats her to it._ “All of it,” _he confirms. _“No stone left unturned. She loves me, Peggy. She’s not gonna let anything happen. I’m your friend, not your responsibility. Don’t shave years off your life worrying about a soldier who’s already come into port.”_

She cocks her head. Her shoulders relax. “I…I know you’re right.” She takes in a deep, slow breath, and then her tone turns wry. “Still, it’s hard not to be worried when you send me your effects like this.”

_“Eh, no effects I’d really want anyone to remember me by, trust me.”_

“Do me a favor, Jack. The next time you wish to mysteriously send me a box of belongings, could you be bothered to call beforehand? Or at least write a less cryptic note?”

Jack laughs heartily on the other end. _“Yeah, Marge. I can do that for you.”_

Peggy packs the medal case in a new box and ships it off to the Department of Justice. She’s not really sure where it needs to go within that division, but it’s the first address she can find without too much digging. She does, after all, have other things to attend to.

She gets word a little after the fact that the package triggered emergency protocols at the Pentagon.

_Good, _she thinks, smiling to herself. _It’s about damn time Jack Thompson gave someone besides me a heart attack._

She has a feeling there will be no need for her to panic over the man again any time soon.

And she’s right.

* * *

Thea takes the stage again. There’s a black baby grand on the left that she takes a seat behind. She plays a few rich chords, pauses while the sound rings out and diffuses.

“You all can hum if you want,” she says to the little audience. “Daddy loved this song, so—” she smiles “—sing it if you know it.”

And then she starts playing in earnest.

It takes a moment for Peggy to catch the melody, but only a moment. Her recognition is further confirmed when she hears the main line accompanied by voices in the front row. She closes her eyes and hums along, too. Two bars later, Steve joins.

With her eyes closed, she can only really focus on the sounds of “What A Difference A Day Made” echoing around the room, and it’s at this point that she notices that there’s significantly more sound than the acoustics in here should allow for.

So she opens her eyes, turns in her seat to look around for the first time.

And Peggy Carter realizes with a start that their “little audience” isn’t little at all.

The church is…_full._

It’s not just a bereaved widow mourning the loss of a title and a fallen soldier.

There’s kids—_Jack Thompson’s kids. _And his _grandkids. _And they loved him—_love him still_—like he hung the moon, and it had nothing to do with a Navy Cross or a position as officer or agent or chief.

There’s a church full of colleagues and friends and old clients. They’re Black and White and Hispanic and Asian, and they’re all people who cared about—_still care about_—Jack Thompson and the work he did and the lives he touched doing it.

Loneliness and isolation were apparently things he hadn’t known in a long while.

Peggy’s heart swells, and, surrounded by an ode to a man who had grown more than she’d ever guessed he was capable of, she starts to really cry.

Because Jack hadn’t just survived.

He had _lived._

**Author's Note:**

> Credit Where Credit Is Due:
> 
> “Take Good Care of Yourself” by Redrikki - It occurs to me that while most fics depicting Jack’s initial recovery start to blend together and sound a little similar, this was one that mine reads especially similar to. I did read this weeks before I started this piece, and when I finished writing this story, it occurred to me that pieces felt familiar. Rest assured, there was no outright or intentional plagiarism here, but I just wanted to acknowledge the author just in case there was concern (also to direct you to this fic if you haven’t read it!). 
> 
> “Jack Thompson is Dead*” by keysburg - Did I know a single thing about detection routes or spy stuff outside of canon generally prior to reading the aforementioned? Hell no.
> 
> Even more sources I consulted to learn about the 1940s and ‘50s (yes, I know some of these links sound irrelevant, but trust me, this story had a lot of potential directions, and I want to respect the information that steered it):
> 
> https://science.howstuffworks.com/prosthetic-limb1.htm  
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-16599006  
https://www.amputee-coalition.org/resources/a-brief-history-of-prosthetics/  
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-greatest-generations-forgotten-trauma/2015/09/11/8978d3b0-46b0-11e5-8ab4-c73967a143d3_story.html?noredirect=on  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypovolemia
> 
> So there's Part 2, folks! I'm taking a break from this saga to finish up another project that I promised myself I'd complete this summer, but rest assured Part 3 from Daniel Sousa's POV is on its way. There's also a mini-series of one-shots in the works to highlight more little moments between Jack and Elouise, so I hope there's a few of you looking forward to that, too. Thanks for reading! See ya 'round the Archive!


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